The interesting Arabic TV show about Japan "خواطر /改善/thoughts"!!
Oct 13th 2011 03:03
japan
Arab
countries
About a week ago, I watched an interesting TV show on NHK (which is a Japanese public broadcasting). According to the show, Japanese traditions have been very popular in the past few years in Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia. Can you guess why? This is because a 30-episode TV show about Japan was aired in 2009 on MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center). In not only Saudi Arabia but also other Arab countries, the show had an great impact on a lot of people and enjoyed high ratings although it was broadcast every evening during Ramadan. Since people are very busy preparing for dinner in the evening during Ramadan, the ratings of TV shows around the time are usually low. Because of this, it's been said that the high ratings were surprising and shows how much attention the TV show drew.
The title of the show is خواطر /改善. 改善/Kaizen is a Japanese word and means improvement etc. Since I don't have any idea of Arabic at all, I don't know what خواطر means. However, I found in multiple websites that the English title of the show is "thoughts". The show was created by MBC and was aired to improve manners of people in Arab countries by means of comparing Saudi Arabia and Japan. In the show, a Saudi Arabian man visited Japan and reported on how ordinary people there were doing things in daily life. Then, the show suggested things that people in Arab countries could learn form Japan. For example, it reported that at elementary schools, all the children took off their shoes and put them in shoe boxes at the entrances, and then suggested that you could learn something from that, showing many shoes scatted around the entrance of a mosque in Saudi Arabia (Please see the first youtube video below). Again, I don't understand Arabic at all, I can't understand what the show exactly indicates.
I've heard that the episode on how elementary school children clean up their classrooms by themselves drew considerable attention (Please see the second youtube video below). The fact in itself that school children clean up their classrooms by themselves seemed to astonish many Saudi Arabians although students do that almost everyday for many years in Japan. When I was a student, I did that without wondering why I should do that. In the aforementioned NHK's show, it was told that students don't clean up their classrooms by themselves in many countries.
The MBC's show titled خواطر /改善/thoughts intrigued me since I could learn what MBC and Saudi Arabians found interesting. Because of this, I watched many episodes of the show on Youtube although I can't understand Arabic at all.
The title of the show is خواطر /改善. 改善/Kaizen is a Japanese word and means improvement etc. Since I don't have any idea of Arabic at all, I don't know what خواطر means. However, I found in multiple websites that the English title of the show is "thoughts". The show was created by MBC and was aired to improve manners of people in Arab countries by means of comparing Saudi Arabia and Japan. In the show, a Saudi Arabian man visited Japan and reported on how ordinary people there were doing things in daily life. Then, the show suggested things that people in Arab countries could learn form Japan. For example, it reported that at elementary schools, all the children took off their shoes and put them in shoe boxes at the entrances, and then suggested that you could learn something from that, showing many shoes scatted around the entrance of a mosque in Saudi Arabia (Please see the first youtube video below). Again, I don't understand Arabic at all, I can't understand what the show exactly indicates.
I've heard that the episode on how elementary school children clean up their classrooms by themselves drew considerable attention (Please see the second youtube video below). The fact in itself that school children clean up their classrooms by themselves seemed to astonish many Saudi Arabians although students do that almost everyday for many years in Japan. When I was a student, I did that without wondering why I should do that. In the aforementioned NHK's show, it was told that students don't clean up their classrooms by themselves in many countries.
The MBC's show titled خواطر /改善/thoughts intrigued me since I could learn what MBC and Saudi Arabians found interesting. Because of this, I watched many episodes of the show on Youtube although I can't understand Arabic at all.
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An interesting Arabic TV show about Japan "خواطر /改善/thoughts"!!
Since I don't know Arabic at all, I don't know what خواطر means.
For example, it was reported that at elementary schools, all the children took off their shoes and put them in shoe boxes at the entrance. The show then suggested that you could learn something from that, showing many shoes scatted around the entrance of a mosque in Saudi Arabia (Please see the first youtube video below).
The fact that school children can clean up their classrooms by themselves seemed to astonish many Saudi Arabians although students do that almost everyday for many years in Japan.
>英語では、受身をなるべく少なくする方がいいと聞いています。文化の違いかもしれませんが、受身はくどいというか、弱々しいというか、出来るだけ使わない方がいいと思います。
そうみたいですね....。It seems thatなども含めて、曖昧な表現は避けた方がいいと分かっていても、まだ感覚的につかめなくて、ついつい使ってしまいます。ありがとうございます。
I think it's really cool that your English is at the level where you can pay attention to matters of style and composition instead of plain grammatical or spelling mistakes.
About a week ago, I watched an interesting TV show on NHK (which is a Japanese public broadcasting channel/network).
According to the show, Japanese traditions have become very popular in the past few years in Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia.
Since people are very busy preparing for dinner in the evening during Ramadan, the ratings of TV shows around that time are usually low.
Because of this, it's been said that the high ratings were surprising and shows how much attention the TV show drew. It'd probably be better to rewrite this sentence to not use "shows" in this context just because you are talking about a TV show and it could get confusing. Very minor point.
However, I found on multiple websites that the English title of the show is "thoughts".
For example, it reported that at elementary schools, all the children took off their shoes and put them in shoe boxes at the entrances, and then suggested that you could learn something from that, showing many shoes scatted around the entrance of a mosque in Saudi Arabia (Please see the first youtube video below). Wow my Japanese housemate could have also learnt something from that :)
The fact in itself that school children clean up their classrooms by themselves seemed to astonish many Saudi Arabians although students have done that for many years in Japan.
When I was a student, I did that without wondering why I should do that (or "without question").
In the aforementioned NHK's show, it was said that students don't clean up their own classrooms by themselves in many countries.
Also if you were naughty, you had to pick up rubbish in the playground!
>Wow my Japanese housemate could have also learnt something from that :)
Oh, really? She/he should watch the show.
In Japan, we have monitors at school, as well. However, all the students usually clean up their own classroom and serve school lunches.
I always liked how the kids would clean the classroom. In my high school, the students were so lazy that they wouldn't even clean up after lunch, and there was trash everywhere. The principal was so mad that he would add extra time to our school day so that they would clean it up.
>I always liked how the kids would clean the classroom.
Really?
>In my high school, the students were so lazy that they wouldn't even clean up after lunch, and there was trash everywhere.
We can see the same situation in some "high" schools in Japan. But, trash isn't "everywhere".